One install CD for multiple systems

[blackcat]

Hello all,

Is there a standard way to prepare a single unattended install CD that can be used on multiple PCs, each of which would want different values in some of the winnt.sif (etc) config files?

I'd have thought that this would be quite a common thing to want to do, but finding any clues on how to do it is not easy

Cheers,

BC

[RyanVM]

You're probably going to want to use a method similar to what gosh outlines on his page.

http://gosh.msfnhosting.com/part1.htm

[blackcat]

Thanks for the pointer. I checked it out but that seems to be more to do with reducing the size of the installation and doing custom actions along the way - my problem is to make XPInstall get different info from its standard config files depending on the PC that it is being installed on.

I think I've found a reasonable solution though - winnt.exe and winnt32.exe let you specify the location of the winnt.sif file on the command line, so I could have (say) a boot floppy which asks which PC is being installed, updates a winnt.sif on the floppy accordingly, then runs winnt.exe (from the cd) to install.

If I wanted to be really clever (and waste a lot of time!) I could write a "mass storage device driver" which could be loaded by pressing F8 right at the start of setup. The real purpose of this driver would be to install itself as a file system filter and dynamically modify what XP Install reads from winnt.sif (on CD) based on which PC it was. Or it could achieve the same thing by creating a RAMDisk, writing an appropriate winnt.sif to it, and (somehow) forcing setup to use that even though the opportunity to specify the location of a winnt.sif on the command line has already passed by that time.

Either would let the whole thing work from a single CD (no boot floppy) and all in read-only mode, which is what I'd like to do.

[likuidkewl]

Or if you have access to Windows Preinstallation Environment you can use this program in this thread, http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=19037 , there are many ways of having this run from WinPE, mainly I use a HTA file that loads at start time, tools etc. are listed and this little program, or you could if you like edit your setupreg.hiv and change the setup keys from CMD.exe to installFLY.exe. But alas just a thought.

[gosh]

Using different BOOT folders you can use different unattend files, or not use an answer file at all.

-gosh

[gribouille]

it isn't possible to say winnt search on floppy for unattend file ?

Greb

[kenedy]

I'm using this method:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=12442

[RyanVM]

Using different BOOT folders you can use different unattend files, or not use an answer file at all.

-gosh

Exactly what I was getting at.